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Contents lists

T. E. Lawrence to A. P. Wavell

21.5.23.

Dear Wavell,

Many thanks for the book (which has gone forward to its next) and
for your long letter. It's exactly the sort of thing which I wanted
to read.

No, I don't feel confident militarily. All the while we fought I
felt like a conjuror trying an insufficiently rehearsed trick -
surprised when it came out right. A succession of such chances gave
me the feeling I was apt at the business: that's all.

Chap. 35. The substance of this was boiled up for Guy Dawnay
some years ago, when he started a thing called the Army Quarterly,
and
asked me for a contribution. You will find it in the 1st number of
the Quarterly. He liked it better than I did. Most people found it
either recondite, or too smart.

I met your cousin once, at a push in London: had no proper talk
of him.

As for the reply to raiding tactics. As you say, it's greater
mobility than the attack. This needn't mean large drafts from the
harassed G.O.C. If the Turks had put machine guns on three or four
of their touring cars, and driven them on weekly patrol over the
admirable going of the desert E. of Amman and Maan they would have put
an absolute stop to our camel-parties, and so to our rebellion. It
wouldn't have cost them 20 men or £20,000... rightly applied.
They scraped up cavalry and armoured trains and camel corps and block-houses
against us: because they didn't think hard enough.

I held the Rolls-Royce Armoured Cars in Akaba as a riposte if (or
when) Turk cars came at us: for I couldn't imagine our being left
free all the time: but we had only 5 R.R. and would have been on the
defensive with them, quite unable to guard our raiding front. They
would have sufficed only to cover Aba-el Lissan-Tafileh, the Arab
Regular-Army front.

Well-destruction was possible only at Bair
and Jefer, as our other
waters were superficial: and we could have dispensed with B. and J. So
that the Turks couldn't stop us with demolitions.

There is one other thing of which every rebellion is mortally
afraid - treachery. If instead of counter-propaganda (never effective
on the conservative side) the money had been put into buying the few
venial men always to be found in a big movement, then they would have
crippled us. We could only dare these intricate raids because we felt
sure and safe. One well-informed traitor will spoil a national
rising.

Bombing tribes is ineffective. I fancy that air-power may be
effective against elaborate armies: but against irregulars it has no
more than moral value. The Turks had plenty [of] machines, and used them
freely against us - and never hurt us till the last phase, when we had
brought 1000 of our regulars on the raid against Deraa. Guerrilla
tactics are a complete muffing of air-force.

Jurgen I've read. As you say V.G. Many thanks for offering me a
copy: but in this atmosphere one reads very little.

As for writing more - to tell you the truth I'm sick of all
manner of effort, and want never to do anything again. I've put my mind
to sleep, coming here.

Yes, I've promised not to admit the Mecca jest. I did it because
I wanted to choose my own gold dagger, and it was not serious for me.
Hussein will never forgive it me.

L.

Source:

DG 422-3

Checked:

jw/

Last revised:

28 January 2006

T. E. Lawrence chronology

﻿

1888 16 August: born
at Tremadoc, Wales

1896-1907: City of Oxford High School for Boys

1907-9: Jesus College, Oxford, B.A., 1st Class Hons, 1909

1910-14: Magdalen College, Oxford (Senior Demy), while working at the British
Museum's excavations at Carchemish

1915-16: Military Intelligence Dept, Cairo

1916-18: Liaison Officer with the Arab Revolt

1919: Attended the Paris Peace Conference

1919-22: wrote Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1921-2: Adviser on Arab Affairs to Winston Churchill at the Colonial Office

1922 August: Enlisted in the Ranks of the RAF

1923 January: discharged from the RAF

1923 March: enlisted in the Tank Corps

1923: translated a French novel, The Forest Giant

1924-6: prepared the subscribers' abridgement of Seven Pillars of Wisdom

1927-8: stationed at Karachi, then Miranshah

1927 March: Revolt in the Desert, an abridgement of Seven
Pillars, published

1928: completed The Mint, began translating Homer's Odyssey

1929-33: stationed at Plymouth

1931: started working on RAF boats

1932: his translation of the Odyssey published

1933-5: attached to MAEE, Felixstowe

1935 February: retired from the RAF

1935 19 May: died from injuries received in a motor-cycle crash on 13 May

1935 21 May: buried at Moreton, Dorset

﻿

This T. E. Lawrence Studies website is edited and maintained by
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